A method or program or system of this kind is used in graphically displaying and engineering large networks in an automation environment where there is usually a high density of information at the user interface. High information densities are difficult for an operator or user to capture, i.e. there is a need to keep them low (central usability approach). A common main requirement lies in presenting the user with a large quantity of overview information. Specifically this means that it must be possible to display an overview of one or more network(s) (a large number of devices and networks) and make them interactively accessible to the user.
The user should graphically connect the devices together and add them to or remove them from existing networks. For this purpose he clicks for example using a mouse on a network interface of a device, drags the mouse pointer to an existing network line segment or to a network interface of a different device and clicks again there. To give the user a sufficiently large area for interaction with the mouse the network interfaces have to be displayed on a much larger scale in relation to the external proportions of the devices than the area they take up on the real devices. The problem here is that in the case of devices with a plurality of network interfaces the situation can occur where it is no longer possible to display all network interfaces since the external dimensions of the devices (and therewith the available area for the network interfaces) in a view, which provides a user with a large quantity of overview information, is too small.